“I set a high bar for new Canon lenses. I expect them to be excellent and generally their recent releases have been. Since this was a wide-angle zoom, though, my expectations were lowered a bit. Canon has always struggled with wide-angle zooms. The 17-40 is a good, not great lens. The 16-35 f/2.8 II is better than the Mk I replaced, but I’d consider it, at best, adequate considering its price.

The 16-35 f/4 IS changes that. It’s a superb optic — as good as anything else available. Of course, a lot of people want an f/2.8 zoom. But for many, like me, f/4 with IS is just fine for wide-angle shooting.”

Once they were done reviewing the EF 16-35 f/4L IS, they decided to take one apart. The LensRentals.com teardowns are a lot of fun, but also give us an idea of how durable the lens is going to be in real world use.

“Now that I’ve seen the insides I’m very optimistic that this lens will be less likely to deteriorate optically over time, and will be more easily corrected when it does. We won’t know for sure until we’ve got a year’s experience with it, of course, but from a design and assembly standpoint it looks really, really good.”

I love mine...Even put up my 21mm f/2.8 Zeiss on eBay this weekend... Hate to let that go...I needed it when I had the 16-35mm f/2.8L II. The Zeiss just blew that lens away... but not the new UAW zoom. I really do not need the f/2.8..and the IS is just what the doctor ordered for most of what I shoot.I know that is not true for everyone.

I love mine...Even put up my 21mm f/2.8 Zeiss on eBay this weekend... Hate to let that go...I needed it when I had the 16-35mm f/2.8L II. The Zeiss just blew that lens away... but not the new UAW zoom. I really do not need the f/2.8..and the IS is just what the doctor ordered for most of what I shoot.I know that is not true for everyone.

But yes, I agree. The results are terrific. I imagine that Mackguyver (easily this forum's most avid discussion person on this lens) probably had kittens reading this article.

- A

What lens? Oh that one, yeah, I suppose I've discussed it a little bit and I love the having kittens phrase - I haven't heard that one in a long time!

The article was quite interesting and I was happy to see how it compared to the Nikon 14-24, but I think we'd all like to see how these lenses compare at f/11 & f/16 where they are most likely to be used for landscapes. Roger's doing this for free and only has so much time, of course, so anything he does is greatly appreciated.

His comparisons seemed to match what I've seen in comparing it to the TS-E 17 and other lenses. To me, the biggest difference between the new 16-35 f/4 IS and the f/2.8 is the color and contrast. It's extremely similar to the 24-70 f/2.8 II and the difference between the f/4 IS and f/2.8 II is very much like the difference between the old 24-70 and the new one. Photos have that prime quality to them (minus the aperture, of course) and I'm really loving the lens. The vignetting and distortion are a bit worse than the old lens, but the Adobe profile works great and DxO's profile is on the horizon.

The sharpness is equal to the TS-E 17 (at 17mm) and 24-70 f/2.8 II (@24mm), but is bested by the 24-70 f/2.8 II at 35mm and the TS-E 24mm at 24mm. I had already sold my 16-35 f/2.8 II, but in previous tests against the 24-70 f/2.8 II, it looked like a mushy mess at 24mm in comparison, at least for the outer 1/3 of the frame. The test also showed me that the TS-E 24mm is one damned sharp lens, no matter what Roger says about it vs. the 24-70 f/2.8 II.

The only truly bad part of the lens was comparing it to my recent TS-E 17 f/4 and finding that while it's just as sharp, the 17 has noticeably less contrast, more muted colors, and more CA. The consolation is that the 17 has almost zero distortion and vignetting (when neutral) and did I mention it tilts & shifts?

Just a question with this lens. Knowing landscapers will stop this lens down considerably for DOF reasons, but also recognizing that at F/16 you've lost (roughly) 20% of the resolution, is there any value in focus stacking with landscapes? Provided you have a truly static scene (limited wind on foliage, no crashing waves, etc.), would compositing together 3, 4, 5, etc. images at a the lens's sharpest aperture yield better results?

Again: landscape newbie here. I've seen this done in controlled/studio macro work quite a bit, but I didn't know if the idea would pay dividends in landscapes.

Just a question with this lens. Knowing landscapers will stop this lens down considerably for DOF reasons, but also recognizing that at F/16 you've lost (roughly) 20% of the resolution, is there any value in focus stacking with landscapes? Provided you have a truly static scene (limited wind on foliage, no crashing waves, etc.), would compositing together 3, 4, 5, etc. images at a the lens's sharpest aperture yield better results?

Again: landscape newbie here. I've seen this done in controlled/studio macro work quite a bit, but I didn't know if the idea would pay dividends in landscapes.

- A

Yes, you can certainly do this and I have tried it with between 2-20 exposures at f/5.6 or thereabouts, but between focus breathing (with some lenses) and the extra time needed during shooting and post, the results don't seem to justify it's use - at least for me. I don't find the effects of diffraction to be quite as severe in real-world use as they appear in test charts, at least after sharpening in post. I find that anything over 24 or may 35mm really needs to be shot at f/16 to get sufficient DOF, at least for many landscapes and without using a T/S lens. There are some photographers (Marc Adamus comes to mind) who do this with great success, primarily to increase DOF.

I love mine...Even put up my 21mm f/2.8 Zeiss on eBay this weekend... Hate to let that go...I needed it when I had the 16-35mm f/2.8L II. The Zeiss just blew that lens away... but not the new UAW zoom. I really do not need the f/2.8..and the IS is just what the doctor ordered for most of what I shoot.I know that is not true for everyone.

Oh I hate this. I sold the 16-35 f2.8L II, got the Zeiss 21/2.8 and Zeiss 15/2.8, in addition to the 17 TS-E. And I was so happy for several weeks.

Reading the test of this new 16-35 throws everything into the boiler again ...

Eldar, I finally gave up and bought the TS-E 17 as well, only to have this lens come out...but the good news is that the lens isn't outrageously priced, and you still have a serious collection of wide/ultrawide lenses. Lenses that hold their value quite well, too, in case you decide to sell them someday, too.